nana's here

after maddux' appointment in the morning, the boys and i picked madelyn up from school, had lunch at chick-fil-a, and headed to cleveland to pick up nana from the airport!  cleveland is only like 25 minutes from us and since we were already there, we took nana to the cleveland zoo.  it was our first trip and i had been wanting to check it out since our milwaukee zoo pass would get us in for free (until it expires in may).  we did have to pay for nana, but i think that the $7 was worth it.

our first stop was the "rainforest".  this area is actually outside of the zoo and a totally indoor exhibit (shocking, i know, that a rainforest would be indoors in the north).  i think i liked this part more than the zoo itself.



mason really liked that the spoonbill was walking around without being in a cage.  he was both excited and a little scared.

madelyn and mason both tried their hands in the mold of a orangutan's hand: 

once we went into the actual zoo, there weren't really many animals to see.  they were largely indoors even though it was a nice, sunny, warm-ish day.  i think that it will be better once spring gets here.  they do have around 8 or 10 giraffes that were indoors, but have a large area to roam when it is warm enough.  i think that will be really cool to see.

the zoo has a lot of outdoor space and is a really nice 'walking' destination.  there is also a large elephant exhibit opening this year that madelyn is pretty excited about.  i didn't really get a lot of pictures, but madelyn did ask me to take a picture of her sitting on this turtle statue and mason joined her.

it would have been a great way to start nana's visit if we hadn't sat in traffic for a very long time on our way back to the apartment.  at least we made it back in enough time for me to still make dinner.  love.